1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to associative memories and, in particular, a system and method for identifying contextual results within associative memories.
2. Background
An associative memory is a memory organization in which the memory is accessed by content, rather than by an explicit address, as with traditional databases. Additionally, reference clues may be continually associated with memory contents until a desirable match is found. Thus, an associative memory may be both a data storage structure and software allowing the data to be accessed by content. An associative memory is more formally defined below. As used throughout this document, the term “query” includes a query, a comparison request, both of these, and multiple ones of these.
In general, associative memories formulate results to a query by matching attribute values of similar entities. In order to be counted, results will contain an attribute value that directly matches one or more of the terms contained within a query. Nevertheless, the results still can be out of context with regard to the user's original intent. When results are out of context with regard to the user's original intent, information not of interest to the user may be returned, possibly along with information that is of interest to the user.